Ok, so maybe this is old news.. but it’s sorta new: However many months ago.. I started the process of upgrading the studio. The trouble is.. I perhaps believe too much in spending lots of money on such things.. I’m willing to go pretty close to starvation, if I can just get that next piece of gear. Knowing that I have this kind of temperament.. I try to compensate by.. if nothing else.. impersonating someone who’s a little on the conservative side.. err.. let me try and explain this a little bit:

I started off by putting together a studio budget saying “I must work inside of these limitations.” At this point I began to look at various tools and try to make the best sorta decisions for working inside that budget.. but wouldn’t you know.. there’s that little matter of mice and men.. where I ended up spending money on things that were not in that budget.. Bad Matt!!! 

Examples:

1. I spent $500 for an upgrade from Macromedia Studio 8 to Adobe CS3 Web Premium. But can you really blame me? $500 for the higher end Photoshop, plus illustrator, acrobat.. oh and the must have upgrade to Flash… plus an upgrade to Dreamweaver and Fireworks? Not to mention that I had an actual Flash Job.. and needed something that would actually run on this computer! 
2. Something like $1500 for Cinema 4D. You know I don’t actually remember what my 3D budget was looking like.. I think I found Lightwave for some ridiculously low price.. and was debating Modo… but.. the Cinema 4D bundle I got was about half off the going rate.. so its sorta like.. “here are some tools you have no business being able to afford,” and I just couldn’t pass that up!
3. Getting ripped off on the Camera.. my memory isn’t serving me well here, but.. there’s one of two possibilities: #1 I simply spent more then I had budgeted, thanks to being ripped off.. #2 I spent all I had budgeted.. when I had planned to spend less, because I wanted to wait to see what I’d need lens wise.. so now I might very well need to invest in more stuff.. which will then bring me over budget.

There are other odds and ends.. I suppose my budget was more about a meditation and a discipline then it was about something I should tyrannically stick to.. but here are the things I’m thinking I  should like to spend more money then originally budgeted.

1. Video / Chroma Key stuff…  this is still somewhat up in the air for me.. I’ve done research into cameras and what I need.. and talked to some people.. and between lights and the actual camera.. it maybe that I should spend a bit more then I’ve planned.
2. Effects for the sound studio.. I don’t know what I budgeted… beyond what I’ve already spent.. perhaps I’ve already spent it all? But there’s a real feeling that what I need is.. well a range of effects really.. mostly for mixing.. I’ve talked about this endlessly in past entries.. so I shant go into it too much here.. accept to go so far as to say there’s been some interesting new stuff announced that… in some cases makes what I want to do more affordable.. and in other cases.. well I could end up seduced into spending more.
3. Microphones: I have mixed feelings on the microphone front.. I frankly don’t do a lot of recording, and don’t really know a lot about recording engineering.. so I certainly can’t claim to be smart about what to buy for what…  A “good microphone” can be up in the $1000 range.. and I’m just not sure if I’d do enough of that sorta thing to make it worth spending that kind of money… but.. to make matters just a little more complicated… there are maybe different types of microphones I might want to invest in for video, and the podcasting stuff.. and field recording.. versus studio stuff.
4. Sound proofing and Monitors: My guesstimate is I’m looking at about $1000 for sound treatment.. this is to turn your studio space into a good space for critical listening while mixing.. in addition to that cost.. there’s the cost of getting good quality audio monitors.. which again can take you upwards of $1000.. 

Besides all that madness.. there is the sense that I might want to invest in a laptop in the not too distant future.. frankly my preference would be to wait another year or two… there is the little issue that much of my software I might want to upgrade over time.. and blah blah blah.. lots of stuff.

iPhone 

One last thing, on this front, that seems worth mentioning is.. I’m thinking about getting an iPhone: I’ve wanted an iPhone since Steve Jobs announced the iPhone.. But.. it seemed a little too on the expensive side.. between the cost of the iPhone and the cost of the data plans. But now my perspective has shifted: For one thing, I’ve inherited my mom’s cell phone and calling plan. I don’t actually use the thing all that much.. I think of it as more her phone then mine, but seeing as I’m spending about $30 a month for that.. plus whatever extras might impact me, should I do any text messaging or talk on it too much.. It seems like the iPhone’s data plan is just not that much more money..  

Anyway, there’s a number of reasons why I think the iPhone would make a lot of sense to me: #1 I never answer the phone as it is.. and it would be great if people had a way to get in touch with me. For instance I have a cousin whom I may collaborating with on some online marketing with.. wouldn’t it be nice if I had a good way for him to get in touch with me? Another thing is I’m a big social media person. Being a social media person I’m forever going to meet ups.. and often getting lost on my way there.. wouldn’t it be nice to have google maps on the go? And besides that, I must say I’m jealous of folks who are able to twitter on the go… and often times, at social media conferences and what not.. twitter can be an important way to know what’s going on. 

There are rummers that a new iPhone is just around the corner… and that it might have faster internet and a video camera. If this is all true, I don’t think I’ll be able to resist it! I’m jealous of folks like Steve Garfield who are able to stream live.. doing there Qik thing! Qik may rely on Flash, which the iPhone still doesn’t do.. but one imagines that some sort of a live streaming platform could arrive shortly, should the iPhone get a video camera.. just do to the power of the iPhone platform…

Kore 2 

So all of this is just a preamble to the new news… which is sorta old news.. I just got an email from Native Instruments telling me that the Kore 2 update has been sent to me, and ought to arrive in about 8 days. 

Ok.. so what’s this Kore business all about? Well if you follow this link and scroll down to the bottom of the page you’ll have a sense of it.. or of my blogging on the subject anyway.

 [editor’s note, I thought this demonstration from NAMM might help]

 

Kore is really a combination of things. You have a hardware controller, which in my case includes an audio interface.. and this controller is married to Komplete, basically..  If you’ve ever used Reason.. Kore is a bit like the “combiner instrument” in Reason. You can load up any number off effects and instruments.. and have patches that are combinations of patches and instruments.. 

Let me see if I can explain this concept a little bit: In a fairly recent blog entry entries on Kontakt, I explained the concept of “sample maps.” Basically, a sample map tells a sampler what sample to play.. depending on what note you’re playing, and how hard you’re playing it… Well, Kore’s combiner like qualities make it a bit like being able to program a sample map for all your instruments and effects.. You can have one “instrument” that contains multiple other instruments and effects.. You can say “as you play up the keyboard.. fade in this instrument.. as you hit the keys harder.. fade in this instrument..” and you can have this with all these layers of sub instruments, lets call them..  

So Kore does a lot of different things… of which I’m only explaining a tiny fraction here. At the moment I’m on Kore 1, and shortly I’ll be in Kore 2.. there’s a lot of differences between these two versions.. but with regard to the preamble to this subject, what’s most important is we have 32 effects, of which 12 are new, and many more updated.  

Back where I was talking about investing in effects… I was thinking about spending around $1000 on effects.. maybe a good deal more then that…. 

Ok, let me interrupt this flow, and regress to an earlier thread.. Because I’m going over budget.. I’ve basically stopped spending money.. that is there’s lots of stuff in my budget I haven’t spent any money on yet.. thus I’m actually not over budget.. (I know, I’m a tricky bastard that way).  

Part of the situation is like.. you have allllll this software / hardware / new tools / whatever.. The sheer amount of stuff I’m trying to learn is… well unrealistic…. depending on how long I want to give myself to learn this stuff.. and at what level I want to be at when.. Plus I’m a lazy bastard that will sometimes spend too much time twittering, social networking, playing endless games of command and conquer..  and what have you.. so there’s something of a feeling like “perhaps we should hold off spending more money till we are more in command of what we’ve already got.”

2 Days latter:

To give a sense of the insanity: I’m trying to learn Komplete 5, which is to say everything that’s new in Komplete since Komplete 3, not to mention the stuff that my computers weren’t ever powerful enough to deal with prior to getting the Mac Pro.. which is not at all insignificant. Add to this Digital Performer, Final Cut Studio, Cinema 4D, What ever is new / upgrades / I never got around to learn with respect to / Adobe CS3… Oh did I forget what is to be learned about Ableton Live?

There’s more on my plate then all that.. but the point is that just this much, to really master, could probably take a few years!  The problem with technology is.. once a new piece of gear is released it’s effective value starts to diminish.. as it drifts towards obsoleteness. To the extent you don’t use that gear.. you’re loosing money / getting less value from it.

The effect is.. the broader the range of stuff you’re trying to learn, the more dispersed your time and energy is… So you really want to limit the range as much as possible.. at least when considered from this angle.

The other angle to consider is you’re own creative impulse and where you feel your self drawn… In the last week or two I’ve been doing a lot of music production / composition stuff with my Toshiro Mifune VS John Wayne project, and as a result I’m feeling the need to think about my sound tools more then I might other wise.

As a part of that, I know there’s a number of directions I want to travel in.. These directions have to do with what sorts of skills I want to develop as well as where I want to take my work. There’s a certain amount I can do given where my studio is currently at.. but there is also the question of how acceptable the required compromises might be.

An example idea, which I may go into in a future blog entry… is I want to start playing with stereo buss compression… or with ideas that are slightly abstracted from that. An issue with respect to stereo buss compression is “what kinda compressors you got?” Digital Performer has a couple of compressors.. but I don’t actually know how applicable they are to doing the stereo buss compression. One of the effects packages I’m looking at is.. perhaps the best compressor library on the planet.. going today.. Well the best you could do if you’re not spending crazy money.. has.. well all sorts of compressors to choose from.. many of which are good for different sorts of stereo buss compression…

Another package I’m looking at has “a good compressor,” along with a number of other effects that would help my studio get to be a little more well rounded..

To draw all this to a conclusion.. Kore 2 is coming.. and it will greatly extent my effects library, making things a good deal more well rounded… Of course it brings lots of other advantages… and it really isn’t all that well geared to a lot of the sorts of effects / applications I’m looking at.. but.. it is something.. And.. to the extent that one of my current needs is simply to have a more well rounded studio situation.. it is perhaps possible that I could drop some items from the list of things I’m looking at.. and just use Kore 2, and wait for the next version of DP.. and maybe throw in the compressor library for good measure

  

This entry was posted on Friday, June 6th, 2008 at 7:03 pm and is filed under Digital Performer, Komplete & Kore, Media / Arts Business, Media Arts, Music Production, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.